elting right away in the softest of
summer rains. When Joy was angry she _sulked_. Joy was precise and neat
about everything. Gypsy was not. Then Joy kept still, and Gypsy talked;
Joy told _parts_ of stories, Gypsy told the whole; Joy had some foolish
notions about money and dresses and jewelry, on which Gypsy looked with
the most supreme contempt--not on the dresses, but the notions.
Therefore there was plenty of material for rubs and jars, and of all sad
things to creep into a happy house, these rubs and jars are the saddest.

One day both the girls woke full of mischief. It was a bracing November
day, cool as an ice-cream and clear as a whistle. The air sparkled like
a fountain of golden sands, and was as full of oxygen as it could hold;
and oxygen, you must know, is at the bottom of a great deal of the
happiness and misery, goodness and badness, of this world.

[Illustration]

"I tell _you_ if I don't feel like cutting up!" said Gypsy, on the way
to school. Gypsy didn't look unlike "cutting up" either, walking along
there with her satchel swung over her left shoulder, her turban set all
askew on her bright, black hair, her cheeks flushed from the jumping of
fences and running of races that had been going on since she left the
house, and that saucy twinkle in her eyes. Joy was always somewhat more
demure, but she looked, too, that morning, as if she were quite as ready
to have a good time as any other girl.

"Do you know," said Gypsy, confidentially, as they went up the
schoolhouse steps, "I feel precisely as if I should make Miss Cardrew a
great deal of trouble to-day; don't you?"

"What does she do to you if you do?"

"Oh, sometimes she keeps you after school, and then again she tells Mr.
Guernsey, and then there are the bad marks. Miss Melville--she's my old
teacher that married Mr. Hallam, she was just silly enough!--well, she
used to just look at you, and never open her lips, and I guess you
wished you hadn't pretty quick."

It was very early yet, but quite a crowd was gathered in the
schoolhouse, as was the fashion on cool mornings. The boys were stamping
noisily over the desks, and grouped about the stove in No. 1. No. 1. was
the large room where the whole school gathered for prayer. A few of the
girls were there--girls who laughed rudely and talked loudly, none of
them Gypsy's friends. Tom never liked to have Gypsy linger about in No.
1, before or after school hours; he said it was not the place for he